John Morgan Walden (1831-1914), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born near Lebanon, Ohio, the son of Jesse and Matilda (Morgan) Walden, who moved to Hamilton County in 1832. He was of Virginian ancestry, his great-grandfather Walden having moved from Culpepper County to Kentucky in 1770, and his grandfather Benjamin, to Ohio in 1802. After the death of his mother in 1833, John went to live with relatives near Cincinnati. He attended a local school until 1844, when he went to work. Becoming a wandering laborer, he found employment as a carpenter. A carpenter for whom he worked interested him in Thomas Paine's writings, and he became a skeptic. He read extensively in Scott and Goldsmith and wrote romantic stories over the name Ned Law for the Hamilton Ohio Telegraph (1849-53). After attending Farmers' College, College Hill, Ohio, in 1849, he taught for a year in Miami County, where he was converted by a Methodist circuit rider. Returning to Farmers' College, he was graduated in 1852 and for two years was a teacher there.

In 1854 he went to Fairfield, IL, where he published the Independent Press, opposing in his editorials the liquor traffic and “squatter sovereignty.” The Illinoisans starved him out by refusing to support his paper, and in 1855 he returned to Ohio, where he reported for the Cincinnati Commercial. So deeply interested in the Kansas troubles did he become while reporting the National Democratic Convention of 1856 that he went to Kansas, where he established the Quindaro Chindowan, a free-soil organ. He was a delegate to five free-state conventions, including the Leavenworth constitutional convention (1858). That same year he campaigned over half the Territory, opposing the Lecompton constitution.

On September 8, 1858, he was admitted on trial to the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first two years were spent on circuits, and on July 3, 1859, he married Martha Young of Chevoit, Ohio. In 1860 he was admitted to the Conference in full connection and sent to the York Street Church, Cincinnati. While he was there the Civil War began, and he became very active and raised two regiments to defend the city against threatening attacks, and became a colonel.

fter service in connection with the Ladies' Home Mission in Cincinnati (1862-64) and as corresponding secretary of the Western Freedman's Aid Commission and of the Methodist Freedman's Aid Society, he became in 1867 presiding elder of the East Cincinnati District. The following year he was chosen an assistant agent of the Western Methodist Book Concern. His penchant for statistics and organization, his business ability, and his sympathetic cooperation with preachers made the Concern a financial success.

t the General Conference of 1884 he was elected bishop. In his official capacity he presided at some time or other over every conference in the United States and inspected Methodist missions in Mexico, South America, Europe, China and Japan, doing much to shape the missionary policy of his Church. He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference in London (1881), Washington (1891) and Toronto (1911). With respect to church organization he insisted on strict adherence to the written law, but otherwise was liberal in his views. His wife and three of his five children survived him. In recognition of his work for African Americans, the name of Central Tennessee College in Nashville was changed in 1900 to Walden University.